It’s Official: Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall Tie the Knot

Hearts all across the world are breaking on this first Friday in March, as the planet’s most eligible octogenarian bachelor officially took himself off the market.

Media mogul and News Corp. executive Rupert Murdoch, 84, tied the knot with model Jerry Hall, 59, in a ceremony at Spencer House, an 18th-century mansion built for Princess Diana’s family, in London. The two posed hand in hand outside for photographers afterwards, Hall brushing her loose blonde waves away from her smiling face before placing her left hand on Murdoch’s navy lapel to show off the heavy, glimmering marquise-cut diamond. Before stepping into their waiting Range Rover, Murdoch planted one on her cheek for the cameras.

Not long after, Murdoch tweeted that he is the “happiest man in the world.”

And the celebration has only just begun. On Saturday, the two will host a second ceremony at the historic St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, known as the spiritual home of British journalism, where most of the major British newspapers set up shop in the 1700s and remained until about 30 years ago, when Murdoch himself led the charge away from the area by moving his print operations to East London.

The church still holds great significance to Murdoch, explained Reverend Canon Dr. Alison Joyce, who told People she will lead the service. “There is a memorial plaque to his later father here . . . and he has attended services here, from time to time, for many years,” she said.

Joyce detailed that the ceremony will include three “well-known traditional hymns” along with choir items and readings. “It will be a service of prayer and blessing at which they will give thanks for their marriage.”

The service will also be a place for the pair’s 10 children to mix, mingle, and celebrate the joyous union. Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald reported that all of Murdoch’s four daughters and Hall’s two will serve as bridesmaids.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

The whirlwind nuptials come after a light-speed courtship that swept through one Rugby World Cup final, a Golden Globes, and a Vanity Fair Oscar party. Murdoch popped the question in January, after just a four-month-long courtship. The pair was introduced by the billionaire’s sisters and niece in his native Australia last summer. The romance may seem swift to some, but these two know better than anyone that true love waits for no one.

This is, in fact, Murdoch’s fourth trip down the aisle. Excluding the roughly three years in between his three previous divorces and his current marriage, Murdoch has been married since 1956, when he was just 25 years old. Each of his earlier matrimonial pursuits had long lives in and of themselves, lasting 11 years, 31 years, and 14 years, respectively.

Murdoch, worth an estimated $11.7 billion, ended his most recent dissolved marriage to Wendi Deng, his former intern, in 2014. Their union was sealed just 17 days after the ink dried on his divorce from Anna Torv. The two fêted their love on Murdoch’s 155-foot yacht, Morning Glory, where the newsman reportedly toasted his bride by pledging to love and take care of her “forever and ever.”

Hall is no stranger to the idea that the meaning of “forever” is a shifting one. She had a decades-long romance with Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger, the father of her four children, which ended in a separation in 1999.

The couple, then, is uniquely suited to make this one go the distance. They know what makes a great romance sour. They understand what pitfalls to avoid, what small stuff not to sweat. They can sail Morning Glory straight through into the sunset of their twilight years, weathering whatever storms may come their way with a timeworn wherewithal built up and bolstered by four combined divorces. If the looks on their faces after their Friday nuptials are any indication, their love is the glowing, stomach-flipping, butterfly-fluttering, key-to-my-soul kind of love. Why else would an 84-year-old billionaire choose to legally bind himself to a woman, 25 years his junior, yet again before God, his many children, and London society, if not in the name of real, unrelenting passion? It is a beautiful, sacred thing, and thankfully, so too, are pre-nuptial agreements.